Commemorative Sheet: Anthony Trollope

Commemorative Sheet: Anthony Trollope

Issue Date: 24 April 2015

Catalogue code: AV032

In April 2015 Royal Mail will be issuing a Commemorative Sheet to mark the bicentenary of the birth of Anthony Trollope, who was one of the most successful and respected English novelists of the Victorian era and had a long association with the Post Office.

The busiest man of letters

Anthony Trollope began his career with the Post Office in 1834 when, at the age of 19, he became a Post Office clerk at St Martin’s-le-Grand in London. Though his early career was not especially distinguished, as his responsibilities grew so did his enthusiasm for the postal service during an innovative and interesting period of its history, with the introduction of the penny post and the steady organisation of efficient delivery routes.

Seven years later, when a vacancy arose for a Surveyor’s Clerk in the west of Ireland, Trollope applied for it and was successful. The position, which would involve a lot of travel, gave him the opportunity to escape office life in London and embark upon a new phase in his career. He would go on to work in different parts of Ireland, England and Wales, which he would later write about in his many novels.

One of Trollope’s key achievements was his determined lobbying for the introduction of pillar boxes into Britain. Such facilities already existed in France and so during a review of postal services in the Channel Islands, he recommended that pillar boxes be trialled in St Helier, Jersey, in 1852. The following year they were introduced to mainland Britain, in Carlisle, and in 1855 London’s first pillar box appeared.

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